San Antonio College Library

The pursuits of an ignorant Southerner and a law student, who meet en route to an Arkansas river island hideaway, begin to interweave, with explosive consequences.

"On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the military to ban anyone from certain areas of the country, with primary focus on the West Coast. Eventually the order was used to relocate 120,000 people of Japanese descent to internment camps such as the Rohwer Relocation Center in remote Desha County, Arkansas ... The novel's narrator, Chess Morton, lives in tiny Rook, Arkansas. Her days are quiet...

Anticipating the filming of a Civil War documentary, Maggody citizens become excited over rumors that Confederate gold may be hidden in a local cave, prompting a flood of outside visitors including an apparently murderous ghost.

"The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a 'good crop'." Thus begins from author John Grisham, a story inspired...